Kansas City Men Looking for Prostitutes Online

Kansas City is teeming with unmet demand for sex with prostitutes who advertise on the Internet, according to an academic study prepared by researchers at the Arizona State University School of Social Work. The report estimated that during the study period in mid-June, 106,624 Kansas City area men were responding to commercial sex ads each day in a national website’s local section.

At 14.5 percent, the Kansas City area ranks second in the nation to Houston’s 21.4 percent in the percentage of men over the age of 18 who respond to online sex ads, according to the researchers.

While the numbers seem large, they did not surprise a prosecutor in the Kansas City U.S. attorney’s office, which consistently has led the nation in sex and human trafficking cases.

Researchers conducted the study to give law enforcement, advocacy groups and policymakers more information to combat human trafficking and sexual exploitation. With the data gathered, researchers arrived at their final population estimates of sex ad customers using a statistical sampling technique that allows researchers to take data from small, observed populations and then estimate the larger populations from which they spring.